Kim Ford

It's ten in the morning in Glastonbury, and Kim's already been awake for several hours when the phone rings.

As she listens to her mother's halting explanation unfold, she can feel the world around her growing dim and distant, each word over the line seeming to echo through a strangely ringing silence.

-- car accident - Route 401 - Morrisburg Station --

-- Meg has a dislocated shoulder - bruises, scrapes - she's okay, Kimmie, I promise --

-- surgery - Alain --

-- still unconscious... --

She makes quick notes on the pad by the phone, asks one question, then tells Deirdre that she'll be on the next flight. After she hangs up, Kim sits perfectly still for five full minutes, staring into space, seeing nothing, hearing nothing through the still, empty silence that surrounds her.

In the sixth minute, she shakes her head briskly to clear it and gets to her feet. After that, the whirlwind begins.


She throws her things into her backpack and a carryon while cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder, making call after call. Neville promises to look after her practice and her patients, while Ellen assures her that she's not to worry, she'll take care of everything else while she's gone. Mark tells her that he'll meet her at Heathrow to get her keys and her car from there, and that either he or Geoff will pick her up at the airport when she gets back.

Her last call, less than half an hour later, is to Dave. It's only five-thirty in Toronto, but she calls anyway; she knows all the way to the depths of her heart and her twinned soul that he'll understand, and so he does. As she leaves for London, for the airport and for the flight to Ottawa, she does so secure in the knowledge that on the other side of the ocean, Dave will be waiting at the airport when she arrives.

It doesn't quite stop the still-constant feeling that she's falling, falling endlessly, but it's a comfort beyond words to know that he'll be there to catch her when she lands.

It's getting colder as the year moves deeper into fall, but it's not yet chill enough to keep Kim from wandering out by the lake for a breath of fresh air.

Currently she's standing near the water with her hands shoved in the pockets of her jacket, looking curiously at an apple tree that's showing a remarkably bountiful harvest.

M--

I'll be here when you get back.

--K

Kim's room number is written at the bottom of the note, which is folded around an extra key.

Dear Meg,

I hope this letter finds you doing all right and that your ankle is healing well, and that it's not too hard for you to get around with the crutches and all.

... even as I start trying to write this, it already sounds--I've--

There's a blotched section, as though something's been scribbled over, crossed out.

I've been thinking about the last couple of times we've talked. (Knowing you, I bet you have too.) Especially that -- well, you mentioned that I'd never asked what it was like for you. Thinking about it, well... you're right. I mean, I guessed, I figured I had a good idea, but I never came right out and asked, and I'm sorry for that. Obviously, you don't have to tell me anything; you know that, so do I, but I'd really like to hear it. All of it; then and now, both.

Oh, Meg, there's so much I want to talk about with you, to share with you -- things like how classes are going for you and if you like university anywhere near as much as I did and what Montreal's like and how it's different from Toronto, and--

--and then there's Dave. I'd really like to tell you about Dave. I think you'd like him.

Anyway. Um, I'm going to send this by way of Mom and Dad, too. Just in case you end up with a couple of copies, that's why.

Love,
Kim.

They'd stayed up late that night. Enough so that Kim overslept a little the next morning, and had to scramble to have the clinic open at nine.

(There'd been time for coffee, of course, and even a bit of chatter over breakfast, but without even discussing it, both of them had silently agreed to leave any significant conversations for later.)

But now she's headed home again, and Kim finds that she's smiling to herself as she walks up the path toward the house.

She's well aware that she's going to have to let a number of people know about her plans, and that fairly soon. Something as large as relocating from Toronto, Canada, to Glastonbury, England, is going to need some explanation. A lot of explanation, more than likely.

Telling people things that they need to know but don't want to hear is never going to get easier, she knows. By now she's even come to accept that.

She's been putting it off anyway.

It's early enough on a Saturday that the coffee shop isn't crowded at all. Kim's sitting at a table near the door, waiting.

Absently, she glances up at the clock. The train should be arriving soon.

It only took one day in Yorkshire for Kim to realize that a part of her had been desperately missing this. The Wells farmhouse isn't Ysanne's cottage, of course, but the space away from people, the peace and quiet -- those things are the same, and very much needed.

It's very different from Toronto, of course, and from what she'd always planned to do with her life. And yet... she's slowly coming to the realization that since Fionavar, her life is never again going to be what it was.

What that means for the future, Kim doesn't yet know.

For the moment, she's not thinking about it. She's packed up some bread and cheese from Annie's kitchen, and gone for a walk outside, under the open sky.

In a way, it had been much easier to deliver Paul's letters to his parents. Even though the essence of the news was the same-- that their son was never coming home -- then, she'd at least been able to assure them that she'd seen him recently, that he was doing well, that he was happy.

There's no way she can do the same thing for Sol Laine.

Dave had awkwardly offered to come with her, and she'd been grateful for that, even as she'd turned him down. Now, Kim stands on the doorstep of the house where Kevin had once lived -- not all that long ago, really -- and rings the bell.

She has to force her fingers to loosen on the letter she's clutching in her hand.

They'd been climbing for three days when they walked into the ambush.

As she and Brock were forced into the midst of the circle of outlaws-- most of them bearing the green tattoos of Eridu, she'd noticed -- Kim had still found a moment for a whimsical, morbid thought: If I end up dying here after all, Aileron will never forgive me for breaking my promise. All humor had vanished, however, when the outlaws' leader had unleashed his temper upon them. He'd broken some of her ribs with the force of his first kick, she knows, and Brock had been far more seriously beaten. Still, even amid her own helpless fury at his actions, Kim had known that there was something more driving his rage. She'd been right, and anger had turned to cold horror as the leader had dragged a young outlaw named Faebur forward to relate what he'd seen. As he'd spoken, she'd seen -- for Seers could go, in fact are forced by their gift to go behind the spoken word to the images that inspire them. And so, as Faebur told his tale, Kim relived the vision with him, witnessing an evil that hadn't been unleashed upon Fionavar in over a thousand years.

The death rain of Eridu.

Soft gray clouds cover the blue of the sky, blocking the sunlight as the gentle spring rain begins-- and with it the shrieks of agony from men and animals alike. Raindrops strike unprotected skin, hissing and burning with acid pain as black blisters form and swell and break, over and over again, until the victims die screaming and lie fallen, noxious and stinking with poisonous foulness, rotting and silent under the unforgiving steel-colored sky, while the rain continues. And continues. And continues, drifting slowly toward the mountains and the unprotected lands beyond.

What hope could there be, in the face of such despair? What hope, for any of them? And yet if there were any to be offered, she was the one who must find a way to carry it, and so Kim had swallowed her horror and her pity and revealed who she was and what she knew. She had told them of her Sight, and of the ship sailing toward Cader Sedat, and what those on the ship sought to do there-- and what she herself had come to the mountains to do.

Convincing them had not been without difficulty, but in the end they had believed her. And when Kim and Brock resumed their journey toward Khath Meigol, they did not go alone-- Faebur had joined them, along with an exiled Rider from the Plain, known since only as Dalreidan, "Rider's Son."
*     *     *     *     *
They've been climbing all morning, the four of them. No one speaks -- at this height, in the thin air, the trail's hard enough without wasting breath on words. In any case, there isn't that much to be said.

Kim's lost in her own thoughts, remembering her dream of the night before. There had been pain in it, and smoke, and the Baelrath blazing on her hand, blood-red and brighter than the sun they're walking under right now--

--the sun. Kim stops suddenly in her tracks, causing Brock to almost run into her from behind, and shields her eyes as she looks as far as she can beyond the mountains. A cry escapes her, and she points. Brock turns to look, and Dalreidan and Faebur spin around to see, as well, but it's Brock of Banir Tal who gives voice to all their joy in that moment as they stare unbelieving at the now-cloudless sky over Eridu.

"Oh my King! I knew you would not fail!"

Looking at the clear sky through tear-blurred eyes, Kim knows that Brock is right-- and knows as well, with a Seer's strange vision, that far away to the west, in the spinning castle of Caer Sedat, the Cauldron of Khath Meigol now lies shattered in a thousand pieces.

After some unknown time, she becomes aware that they are waiting for her. Kim exchanges a glance with her companions, and then nods.

"They've done their part. Now it's our turn. We go on."